Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



times as a counterbalance and set-off to the more 

 dignified, and a character devoid of them would 

 be very insipid ; just as among the members of 

 the body, the less honoured have their place as 

 well as the more honoured, and could not well 

 be discarded. 



Hence a number of writers, abandoning the 

 attempt to draw a fixed line between virtuous 

 and vicious passions, have boldly maintained that 

 vices have their place as well as virtues, and that 

 the true salvation lies in the golden mean. The 

 tiruiKfia and (T(t)(j)po<jvvii of the Greeks seem 

 to have pointed to the idea of a blend or 

 harmonious adjustment of all the powers as the 

 perfection of character. Plutarch says {Essay on 

 Moral Virtue)^ " This, then, is the function of 

 practical reason following nature, to prevent our 

 passions either going too far or too short. . . . 

 Thus setting bound to the emotional currents, 

 it creates in the unreasoning part of the soul moral 

 habits which are the mean between excess and 

 deficiency." 



The English word " gentleman " seems to have 

 once conveyed a similar idea. And Emerson, 

 among others, maintains that each vice is only 

 the " excess or acridity of a virtue," and says 

 " the first lesson of history is the good of evil." 



According to this view rightness or wrongness 

 cannot be predicated of the passions themselves, 

 but should rather be applied to the use of them, 

 and to the way they are proportioned to each other 

 and to circumstances. As, farther back, we left 



158 



